"Our key innovation is to use changes in congressional committee chairmanship as a source of exogenous variation in state-level federal expenditures. In doing so, we show that fiscal spending shocks appear to significantly dampen corporate sector investment and employment activity. This retrenchment follows both Senate and House committee chair changes, occurs in large and small firms and within large and small states, and is most pronounced among geographically-concentrated firms."

We show that becoming a powerful committee chair results in a significant increase in federal funds flowing to the ascending chairmanís state.2 Thus, a congressmanís ascension to a powerful committee chair creates a positive shock to his or her stateís share of federal funds that is virtually independent of the stateís economic conditions.

Do you realize that this phenomenon is the independent variable, not the dependent variable? There's really no reason to be MAF because someone's study is built on an obvious independent variable - that's a positive feature, because it means we can focus on whether it causes the outcome it correlates with (changes in economic growth) rather than whether it's happening.